In this episode of The Disappearing Spoon, Sam Kean talks about Mary Ward, a budding naturalist and astronomer from Ireland. She spent a lot of time observing plants and animals through a microscope and published a book of detailed sketches that dazzled readers and colleagues in the 1800s. However, her career was cut short by a strange curiosity of that time period: the automobile. They weren’t the same cars that are around today, but her death was the first car death recorded in history, and it foreshadowed the carnage the automobile continues to leave behind.
CreditsHost: Sam Kean
Senior Producer: Mariel Carr
Producer: Rigoberto Hernandez
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Pfeffer
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The Mothers of Gynecology
Correcting Race
"That Rotten Spot"
Black Pills
Bad Blood, Bad Science
The African Burial Ground
Return, Rebury, Repatriate
The Vampire Project
Keepers of the Flame
Calamity in Philadelphia
BONUS EPISODE: Cheddar Man
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The Sinister Angel Singers of Rome
Disappearing Spoon: The Murderous Origins of the American Medical Association
The Big ‘What If’ of Cancer
Disappearing Spoon: The Harvard Medical School Janitor Who Solved a Murder
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History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
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